Long term visitors of this blog would know about a blog post of mine, about Club Mahindra Holidays and Resorts, which became immensely popular on the net for sometime, commanding close to 500 comments till date.
About an year later, I was invited, along with few other well known bloggers, for an all expense paid trip to their Coorg resort. For few years, I didn’t have much clue what all had happened behind the scenes.
Below is an interesting video, wherein popular blogger and social media consultant Kiruba Shankar talks to a group of students in IIMB, explaining how he advised Club Mahindra to counter the PR disaster caused by my blog post. Watch the video below:
<video not available now-2020 update>
Just trying to imagine how things would have turned out if I had to face a legal battle with Club Mahindra…
My post was never a criticism of Club Mahindra resorts as a venue. Wondering if both Kiruba and Club Mahindra missed the point. It was more about various customer unfriendly stuffs in their membership policy- which are either not revealed to members at the time of bookings or covered superficially with oral promises. If you analyse 480+ comments, most of the complaints are related to what they were promised by the sales staff and the difficulties they’re facing, while trying to make use of their membership. So the focus is needed in preventing sales teams from over promising and ensuring that all customers get to enjoy their annual holidays (and if they’re not able to, due to no fault of theirs, then provide them a compensation/exit option)
Anyhow, a lot has been written about Club Mahindra in this blog, so not planning to write any more. Here’re the links to previous posts
*Club Mahindra Timeshare Membership- Review
*Club Mahindra Binsar trip for travel bloggers Part 1 & Part 2
*Club Mahindra Binsar Valley- Resort Review
*A set of Q&A with Club Mahindra official response, published during their IPO
*Interview with Arun Nair, Sr Manager, Web Initiatives, Club Mahindra
*Club Mahindra's Coorg trip for travel bloggers
*Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley- Review and some FAQs
*Club Mahindra post topping search engine
*Analysis of initial 100 comments to Club Mahindra post
*Buy/Sell used Club Mahindra and other timeshare memberships - Has been widely popular with hundreds of entries
*Buy/Sell days of timeshare membership
*Is fixed week timeshare membership better than floating type?
About an year later, I was invited, along with few other well known bloggers, for an all expense paid trip to their Coorg resort. For few years, I didn’t have much clue what all had happened behind the scenes.
Below is an interesting video, wherein popular blogger and social media consultant Kiruba Shankar talks to a group of students in IIMB, explaining how he advised Club Mahindra to counter the PR disaster caused by my blog post. Watch the video below:
<video not available now-2020 update>
Just trying to imagine how things would have turned out if I had to face a legal battle with Club Mahindra…
My post was never a criticism of Club Mahindra resorts as a venue. Wondering if both Kiruba and Club Mahindra missed the point. It was more about various customer unfriendly stuffs in their membership policy- which are either not revealed to members at the time of bookings or covered superficially with oral promises. If you analyse 480+ comments, most of the complaints are related to what they were promised by the sales staff and the difficulties they’re facing, while trying to make use of their membership. So the focus is needed in preventing sales teams from over promising and ensuring that all customers get to enjoy their annual holidays (and if they’re not able to, due to no fault of theirs, then provide them a compensation/exit option)
Anyhow, a lot has been written about Club Mahindra in this blog, so not planning to write any more. Here’re the links to previous posts
*Club Mahindra Timeshare Membership- Review
*Club Mahindra Binsar trip for travel bloggers Part 1 & Part 2
*Club Mahindra Binsar Valley- Resort Review
*A set of Q&A with Club Mahindra official response, published during their IPO
*Interview with Arun Nair, Sr Manager, Web Initiatives, Club Mahindra
*Club Mahindra's Coorg trip for travel bloggers
*Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley- Review and some FAQs
*Club Mahindra post topping search engine
*Analysis of initial 100 comments to Club Mahindra post
*Buy/Sell used Club Mahindra and other timeshare memberships - Has been widely popular with hundreds of entries
*Buy/Sell days of timeshare membership
*Is fixed week timeshare membership better than floating type?
They must have hired a web consultant to push back your site appearing on first page in google search results.
ReplyDeleteLot of official web URL seems to be indicating same:
clubmahindragoa.com (one for each resort)
clubmahindrablog.com
clubmahindraresort.in
etc ..
Its very natural for any company to hire a SEO vendor to get favorable results in search engines
ReplyDeleteQuite an impact that blog post created!! Well done Shrinidhi!
ReplyDeleteInteresting listening...It may be an interesting book to write about this whole saga.. It can become a management case of 21st century..
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you created such a furore :)
ReplyDeleteNice to see that they took someone on to sort out their online reputation though, and you got a free trip out of it ;)
Thanks Nikki, Vivek and Sai..
ReplyDelete